Antoni Tàpies

As an accompaniment to the retrospective exhibition Antoni Tàpies. The Practice of Art, the Museo Reina Sofía has jointly published, with the Museu Tàpies, an extensive catalogue which, as well as reproducing a comprehensive selection of the Catalan artist’s work, includes a broad array of texts.

Manuel Borja-Villel, the show’s curator, approaches Tàpies’ oeuvre from the personal relationship between both. The other essays included explore the artist’s reception in the USA, the attribution of some of his works to the genre of history painting and the construction of the artist’s public figure. 

First-hand accounts of themes such as the influence of Surrealism, Eastern philosophies and the thinking of Ramon Llull, colour, materiality and the various recurrent motifs in his work are brought together in extracts from interviews.

Finally, there is an analysis of different pertinent documents in the artist’s career arc, for instance photogaphs, press cuttings, correspondence and his sketchbooks.